


Found Peace In Your Violence

by LookingForDroids



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Angst, Emotionally-Fraught Make-Outs, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Psionic Vampirism, Quadrant Confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22352191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: When you’re all out of choices, sometimes comfort and anger are two sides of the same coin.(This was written for the promptYour faves on a ship,and... yep, they certainly are that.)
Relationships: Folykl Darane/Marsti Houtek
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	Found Peace In Your Violence

The thing about ships that no one in authority ever really thinks about is that they’re full of places where no one in authority ever really goes. There are disused cargo bays, out of the way lifts and lavatories that still need cleaning; there are back-passages and maintenance tunnels threaded through every deck, used by the janitorial crew and almost nobody else. And behind those tunnels, between-decks and close against the inner wall of the hull, there are dark, cramped crawl-spaces, accessible by hatch but never accessed in the absence of a problem. It’s Marsti’s job to keep there from being a problem, and to deal with it when one arises, and that means the only one who searches them on the regular is her. It’s those passages that she moves through now, ducking low beneath pipes and trailing wires, willing herself not to care about the aggregated dust and grime of what might be centuries. The fact that the walls are lined with biowires carrying power from the helmsblock to the rest of the ship...well, it’s creepy, but it makes some things easier. So she doesn’t think about that either, just finds her way by rote until she reaches an alcove where two low, narrow corridors meet. 

Folykl is waiting there – a thin figure folded in on herself in the corner, just a shadow among shadows until the light of Marsti’s torch passes across her face. She’s got her headphones, a phone patched into the ship’s network, a stack of nutrient bars not yet running low. No sopor, but that can be endured. Most things can, when you don’t have a choice about it. Some things can’t, without wearing you down to nothing, but Folykl is tough. She has to be. She lifts her head when Marsti sits down across from her, and grins mirthlessly, spidery fangs pressing down the corners of her mouth. It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but Marsti thinks she might have been crying.

“How are you doing?” she asks. No sympathy. Folykl doesn’t want sympathy. Just a request for information.

“I’m getting used to it.”

“Good.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” she says. “It’s like living inside a corpse, except he’s still alive somewhere, and that’s worse. It’s shit and I want it to keep being shit.”

“I can guarantee you,” Marsti says, “that for all the many dangers of our situation, suddenly not being shit is not among them.”

“Yeah,” Folykl says, sounding tired. She settles back against the wall, letting her head fall back with a sigh as she sinks into the organic tangle of wires that sustains her. Her face and sweatshirt are stained dark with their fluid, which looks disturbingly like blood in the low light, and Marsti wants to drag her into the ablutionblock below and scour her clean. That’s not safe, though, and won’t be for a while. She can deal with it. Both of them have dealt with worse.

“You know,” Folykl says, “I could probably get anywhere in this ship from here. The armory. The bridge. Chief Engineer Bulgefuck’s respiteblock.”

It’s obvious what she’s dreaming about, and it’s probably mostly rage, the cold kind that waxes and wanes but never quite leaves you, but some of it might be the fact that the trickle of power she can siphon from here really isn’t enough. That ought to scare her, Marsti thinks, or maybe it just ought to bother her. Maybe it would have done both of those things, once.

“You’d be able to kill one of them,” she says. “Maybe more, if you were lucky. And then you’d get caught.”

“Trying to keep me from doing something stupid?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, don’t,” she says, and turns her face away. She looks smaller like that than she had before, and Marsti can’t shake the thought of going about her shift night by night while Folykl waits alone, curled up in the belly of the same monster that swallowed her moirail whole. The dark of the place doesn’t matter to someone who can’t see, but the sounds are eerie and lonely – something dripping somewhere, indecipherable echoes, the hum of distant engines an inescapable reminder. It isn’t right. It hurts to think about, and before Marsti can stop herself, she’s reaching out to rest a hand on Folykl’s arm, feeling her jump and then go still beneath the touch. The pull of psionic osmosis is a low, constant sensation, but it’s bearable. Worth it. 

Folykl draws a small, shuddering breath, and there’s a second when she leans against Marsti’s hand, acting on instinct, seeking warmth or comfort or just the energy she needs. Then she moves, gripping Marsti’s arms and shoving her backwards, hard against the opposite wall. Marsti feels the impact of steel against her skull and shoulderblades as she falls back, and then the weight of Folykl bending over her, compact and surprisingly strong, teeth bared in a snarl.

“You are _not_ my _fucking_ moirail,” she hisses. Her claws dig into Marsti’s skin, deep enough to draw blood, and without the biowires there to take the brunt of the drain, Marsti can feel the chill of energy leaving her from every point of contact. It doesn’t hurt, but it still feels like a warning.

“No,” Marsti says. “I’m not.” And there are a lot of things she could do just then, but instead of any of the smart ones, she takes Folykl’s face between her hands and drags her down into a kiss. 

She doesn’t know what she’s doing, or why. It doesn’t feel like hate, but still she bites down, tasting blood and old sweat and biowire gunk, refusing to recoil. It isn’t exactly pity, but she cups the angle of Folykl’s jaw, touches her tangled hair and the back of her neck, all those vulnerable places. All she knows is that she isn’t anybody’s fucking moirail, not some weak replacement for a troll they’re going to find a way to steal back anyway. It’s impossible to say how much of this is proof of that and how much is something she wants for herself, but the flood of heat that hits her when Folykl’s hands unclench enough to run up her arms and Folykl’s hips press down against her own is dangerously real. There’s nothing soft about her now, though Marsti can remember a time when there had been. She’s desperate and jagged-edged and filthy, and Marsti can’t fix any of that, so she just holds on longer than she should, longer than is safe, until her breath comes short and her pan swims like she’s been too long underwater. In the end it’s Folykl who stumbles backwards, touching her own mouth like she doesn’t quite believe what just happened.

“What the fuck, do you have some kind of deathwish?” she says – angry on the surface, shaken underneath.

 _Do I?_ Marsti wonders, thinking of the days when she used to look highbloods in the eye for the sake of nothing more than a scrubbed-clean alley wall, but what she says is, “Do I seem dead to you?”

“If you don’t watch it, you could be,” Folykl says. It’s true. Marsti knows it’s true. But all she can think, just then, is that she’s a rustblood janiterrorist on a ship full of ceruleans and fucking purples, and every day of her life is one where she could be dead if she doesn’t watch herself.

“I know what I’m doing,” she says. “How far I can push things.”

And she knows herself well enough to recognize that old reactive urge, tamped down and locked into submission, to push things just a little bit farther. She thinks maybe Folykl might recognize it too, but there’s no resistance when Marsti guides her back into the nest of wires and leans above her, not quite touching, hands framing her shoulders and knees bracketing her hips. It isn’t safe, what she wants right now, and that’s probably half the reason why she can feel the tip of her bulge already curling against the front of her uniform. A cerulean would probably be dead already. Even a seadweller might, if they were weak enough. But even if Marsti doesn’t have half the power to drag a garbage scow from dirt to orbit, the rust in her blood still counts for something, and she means to use it.

 _I’m here with you,_ she thinks, _now and after._ She knows what she’s doing. She knows why. And she touches Folykl’s face again, shivering at the hungry sound she makes as she turns her head to press against Marsti’s fingers. 

“I’ve got the day off tomorrow,” Marsti says, bending almost low enough to kiss her again, speaking with the heat of a promise. “It doesn’t matter if I crash.”


End file.
